Jungle Rock Blues, page 21
From the porch, the old black Lincoln could be seen, parked squarely across the gateway, as though you might want to run down the path, jump in the car and escape. But no one ran. Except for Mrs Presley, everything moved slowly. There was no lawn here, only tufts of dry grass, and dust. Vernon, standing beside him, said, “My boy wanted to be a singer.” Mah. “It’s like you’re havin’ the life my boy should’ve had.” Vernon always seemed to be looking away, or looking down. Sometimes he seemed angry inside. But then he stood beside Caliban for long periods, as Jimpi had done, stood next to him, as though he liked being in his company.
All day Caliban waited. The house was too small to pace about in and he didn’t know the neighbourhood, so he sat in chairs – in the front room, on the porch, watching the shadows crawl. Then he went to Elvis Presley’s bedroom and sat on the bed. Then finally Vernon led him in and together they looked at the clock. Soon after Marion Keisker arrived and drove him away.
‘So, Caliban,” she said.
Caliban listened, but there wasn’t any more. He looked at her, driving, and for the first time a weight of doubt came into him. Everything was hard to understand here, he didn’t have June to explain. Things were wrong – Mr Presley was wrong, and Mrs Presley had a big lump of feeling inside, and the singing with Scotty Moore and Bill Black had not been right. He wanted to ask Marion what she meant.
But June had told him that if he didn’t ask, didn’t say anything, people would be satisfied with him. Because you’re so big, she said. So he watched and listened, and waited to see if he would feel better. But he was carrying a weight.
In the studio at Sun Records he sang Over the Rainbow for Sam and Goodnight Irene. He sang all the songs he had sung at Scotty Moore’s house, all over again. Walkin’ My Baby Back Home. Scotty played along again, and Bill talked and laughed and slapped away at his big, thumping instrument. There was a microphone this time, Caliban liked that because it meant that there was an upright thing next to him when he was standing, for company. For a home base. Scotty’s son was there, too, Floyd, from his first marriage, who had come to stay for a few days, and Floyd had his little guitar, almost a toy, but he could play it quite nice, Scotty said. Sam Phillips said, “What the hell – long’s he’s stayin’ out of the way,” and let him sit in, though Caliban could see Sam’s eyes bright on the boy, as though he was the reason the feeling wasn’t right.
Because it wasn’t.
Caliban sang, he sang as he’d sung in the bush, he did what June and Eve had told him and imagined he was high on his rock there, singing along with the radio. He broke his heart open. Sam came out and adjusted the microphone, talked to him like an uncle. “You have a good voice. You are really singing for us now. Keep at it there, Caliban.” For the first time he sang with his eyes closed, he didn’t know where he was – he went right inside the song and at the end came out, blinking, to find himself in America, in the pale green looming space of the studio. He listened hard to the musicians – Bill’s thumping sound down at the bottom and Floyd’s little plunk, plunk there in the middle and Scotty chopping and filling in up top, dime-store Chet Atkins, with just a little Les Paul. It was Scotty in particular, Caliban realised, that the bad feeling was coming from. Scotty was playing, Caliban thought, like he was eating food he didn’t care for – as though something had gone rotten. Caliban wanted to ask: What is bad? But he didn’t think it would be right. They played a song that Caliban liked, I Love You Because, and he thought it sounded good. But Scotty faded out halfway through and when Caliban got to the end of the words he turned and asked Scotty, “What should I do?”
Scotty was embarrassed. Caliban, when he spoke to you, was clear and strong. A direct question from such a big guy, who just one minute ago had been laying himself wide open, spreading out his heart through a slow weeper – I love you because – well, it had a force.
Sam came bustling out of the booth. “I was just thinkin’ on that. Caliban, son, you’re singin’ up a regular storm there. Now, now, believe me – it’s comin’. I do believe that. Just take it easy. Rome wasn’t built in one day.” There he paused and looked to see if Caliban understood what Rome was. No sign from the big man, who was listening carefully. Caliban, in a white shirt, open at the collar, dark slacks, hands by his hips, ready – but for what? Sam said, “I was just thinkin’ – how about we try one of those sides I sent you. How about ... I Got a Woman. Let’s try that.”
Well, Caliban knew the words. He had sung them, up in June’s bedroom. He tried to make them come out of him. But he couldn’t find the song. The musicians seemed not to have real parts to play, they just seemed to play little bits, Caliban couldn’t hear how it all fitted together. And where should his voice go? He looked at them for help. Scotty kept his head down, talking to his son about the fingering. Bill was always looking back, saying, “Good, Caliban – go, man!” and trying to give him something. But Caliban couldn’t find the direction.
They tried I Can’t Quit You and Rocket 88 and Devil Man Got My Baby. Caliban was so lost. Far away, somewhere small, he could remember the horizon he’d once heard inside these songs – how they had seemed to be the only way to the open. He had pictures too of the streets in June’s California, where he’d strode out, finding the sound he had heard. But that was somewhere now that was far away – he didn’t know how to bring it here. And the music the other guys were playing made it harder. They weren’t with him, he wasn’t with them. Sam appeared again, like a genie, appearing to make little adjustments, to encourage – and he spoke thoughtfully to Caliban. “Do you get what the song’s about? See, the guy had a woman, you know, like that girl June you came here with, just like you and June, and he’s lost her. June’s far away right now, isn’t she. And she might always be far away, from now on, mightn’t she.” Sam looking to see if this was bad news to Caliban. “And this guy, he can’t tell why that might be, so he thinks that the Devil might have taken her – well, he knows it’s his friend, but he doesn’t want to think of his friend in that way, see, so he says, the Devil got in him, and he got in his baby too. Like the Devil might get your girl June.” Sam looking hard at him. “Are you familiar with the Devil, Caliban?” Caliban didn’t think that he was. Sam laughed – a twisted, frustrated sound. “No. Well. I’m not sure I’m exactly familiar with the Devil either.” Ahm. Ahm not showah. Everyone laughed. Sam, eyes full of an idea, trying to give it to Caliban. “Well, the Devil, now, he’s someone bad, someone utterly bad. Ah, like a spirit. Like a demon.”
Surely the wild man from the jungle knew what a demon was.
They all got in on it – relieved to have something to do. “Like something just evil,” said Bill, screwing up his face.
Little Floyd chimed in. “Just something that burns and pains up your soul.” Scotty gave the kid a look, but Floyd stood behind his statement.
“Like all your ugly thoughts turned into a person,” said Bill. “Like a man made of fire, just burning you right up.”
“Okay,” said Sam. “I think that close to covers it – Caliban? So that’s what I want to hear in that song – a bit of Devil! Okay? Okay, ever’one? So let’s just play it now!”
But they couldn’t just play it now.
They worked over every song that Caliban could think of. In his head was a man made of fire, he could see that – but he didn’t know how to sing it. He didn’t know what that might sound like when it came out of your throat. Finally Scotty broke a string and they settled for a break. Scotty was a pro, he never broke a string, maybe he was trying to say something. Whatever – Sam bristled out with Cokes, they kept it going, Sam and Bill cracking away at each other and everyone enjoying them. But there was a lost feeling, a feeling that this wasn’t the day. Well, it was late, no point in losing sleep, there would be other days – that was the feeling.
Caliban aching.
Is through desperation the only way?
Sam had decided to fix a new tape in the machine and he went back to the booth. Bill was squatting with Scotty, making talk. In the pale green room a faded old atmosphere began to settle, as though the action was over for the night.
Now: what occurred next has become the centre of the legend, its beautiful moment. This event has been so often written about, so worked over – everyone wants to go inside it, to ask again: Exactly what started it? What were the things that came together – please tell me.
Because this is the moment when a new America was born. I do believe that. Nowadays, there are new Americas every six weeks or so, every time the share market gets a fever, with every new logo on CNN. And there’s always been different Americas, the mountain places, the one-horse backwaters, the street Americas. Fine. But I am talking about something else.
One morning, eating flapjacks at the kitchen table, Caliban asked Mrs Presley, “Can you tell me please – what is the Devil?”
She turned at the stove, her mouth open. “Why, Caliban! Wherever did you learn that word?” And she set right down at that table and fixed her dark-worried eyes on him.
Maybe it was Floyd started it, maybe it was Caliban. Certainly it was those two first, and no Devil in either of them.
In some recountings Floyd comes up with the song, sometimes it’s Caliban. This latter is less likely, I think. Well, he had heard the song, he often said that, on the radio in the cabin. Which he might have. Not on the National Programme of the New Zealand Broadcasting Service – no, sir. But June had sometimes managed to drag in a station that was skipping off the clouds. She wrote in her book, We heard disk jockeys raving from across the Gulf, we heard swamp music and the sounds of the city. Caliban didn’t understand, but he always listened. And he remembered everything he ever heard. So maybe they picked up Dewey Phillips – I do realise that earlier in this account I mentioned his name, and this was no accident. Hail, Dewey, I hereby salute you. Dewey said they caught him for sure, Caliban and ol’ June, when he played that song he always felt it was reachin’ out, special – well, he would, wouldn’t he. But it is possible. And, because of the way things went from there for Caliban, it’s been my belief that it was he who came up with the song, it was Caliban who was the desperate one, and so I want to explain how this might have been possible. But I am not going to die for this. It was Caliban and the boy and if Floyd should get a major credit here, well, he definitely was half of it.
Maybe there was a thunderstorm, lightning forking down. Maybe there was an angel passing, heard the Devil’s name.
The sound of the boy’s guitar was later described as “somebody plunkin’ on a bucket lid,” and that just about gets it. On his little bitty guitar he was plunking and Caliban was hollering, Bill came in, slap slap boom, and Scotty must have fixed that string because he was in there too, this was just fooling, it was just ever’one lettin’ go cause the whole damn night had just been a total wipeout. It was nothing, it was just a letting-it-all-go dumb noise, this is how it’s always been described – when Sam’s voice came over the speakers: “Hey, what’s that you’re doin?”
Scotty: “Nothin’. Nobody knows. We’re just foolin’.”
Sam: “Well, back up, find a place to start and do it again. That’s what we’re lookin’ for!”
Those words have been carved in stone: because that was Caliban Presley’s first glimpse of his future – and the birth of rock ’n’ roll.
Please note that in fact it was Sam Phillips who recognised what he was hearing. If another man had been at the desk ... who knows? Sam had a notion, he had a vision. He sensed something in the America of that day – its motor was running. Sam had been listening out for some years now, his ears were to the ground. This old phrase, it describes people listening for the far-off pounding of horses’ hooves – war coming. Have you ever actually pressed your ear to the ground? Me, I don’t hear any hooves. What I hear is groaning, heaving, as the tired old planet hefts its load.
The song itself was a blues thing, That’s All Right (Mama), a minor hit for a black singer-songwriter named Arthur Crudup in 1946. Yes, I always have heard that “crud” in there too, maybe that’s why he went by “Big Boy”? Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, it’s a serious name. I never met the guy, who knows what was big about him? On the original Arthur has just the laziest voice, as he tells his baby that everything is sweet. It’s all right, he sings this phrase with such easygoing charm.
But he just walks the tune.
In Sam’s studio down in Memphis, Caliban and the guys worked the song over. Sometimes they played it draggy. Sometimes they raced it up. Suddenly Scotty came into his own, Scotty and Bill, that little bit of experience they had – they threw the tune around, they tossed it back and forth. But Sam has said that the key factor was that they were all amateurs. “We was all such damned amateurs. That’s what I’m so proud of.” And then stir in the other magic of Caliban and Floyd. The boy getting his first taste of juju – he’d never hit such a primal beat before – and the wound-up singer, the lonesome oncer come in from the edge of the planet. On that first record Caliban’s voice is so young. It’s trying to find itself. But at the same time it gives out that beautiful confidence, the absolute belief that at the heart of nature everything is all right. And yet there’s also such yearning there. It’s not in need your lovin’. No, this line is muted, it’s held in. What the singer is holding back for is the chance to throw everything into the assertion – that’s all right, now, mama! It’s such a strange line to hang your hat on. Because there’s so much suggestion, isn’t there, that everything might in fact not be all right. Isn’t it that his mama – his baby – has been bad? Oh, this terrible confusion between mother and lover, between baby and child – you can hear how Caliban is struggling with that. But out of this mess of emotion comes something that is just so downright appealing. Isn’t he saying here, I can take it, all of it – and it’s still all right. I’m still all right, we’re still all right, after what you did, everything is still all right. Because – listen to this – when all the words are done, then he goes into La dah da dee dee dee dee. Bill came up with that when they were missing a third verse, and Caliban, who could ape anything, just got it. He sings this nonsense like it’s, oh, something so jaunty. There’s no insistence in the song, no need to prove anything. No, Caliban just gives it over to us as though every care in the world can be nothing if you are only big enough.
I could go on. The way he caresses all right, this has every hope and need and hunger in it, and yet it’s filled with pleasure, just the extraordinary pleasure of being. Ah, go play the record.
“Okay, I have that,” said Sam over the speakers. It was deep in the middle of the night now, they were all flaming out. Floyd especially was bright-eyed, like he might drop and never rise. Had there ever been such a moment? When Floyd hit his strings he was looking into Caliban’s eyes and seeing the whole power of what it was to be a man – that this was going to be his. And Caliban, looking back, what did he see? Inside Floyd, the pure believer that is alive in every child. A beautiful moment, full of both the Devil and all the angels. “It’s there, boys,” said Sam. “I think it’s really there.”
Mrs Presley had a stern eye fixed on Caliban and she was just bristling. She pulled his plate of flapjacks away and had him attend to her. The little kitchen was a box of electric light – no shadows. With a rigid finger she was poking holes in the air. “As soon as you hear his name, you must be on guard. People think they can say it and it’s just a word. It’s not a word! It’s his name, Caliban. You say it and he comes. He has other names too, I’m going to say them now so you’ll know, but I ain’t callin’ him – understand?” This last word was not said to him, it was said up into the air. “All right: Satan. All right: Lucifer. Old Nick. Beelzebub. The Fallen One. Let me see – the Demon Master. The Whoremaster. Old Scratch. The Evil One. The Prince of Darkness. Oh, oh – now help me, Lord, I ain’t callin’ him.”
Caliban wondering if they had called him on that magic night – was that why the music had worked?
Every night now the music was working.
“But, see, he was an angel. Imagine that, Caliban. He was an angel of the Lord, with every virtue that an angel can have” – her face, shining at this thought, it lit up the whole kitchen – “and it wasn’t enough for him!” Her hand slammed the table. “All the knowledge of the universe, all the beauty and history, all of eternity – imagine having that inside you! That’s what an angel has. And he lost that. And now he roams the earth, trying to find others who will join him. Join him in the fires. Because we all have it in us, you know.” Now her finger was pointing again – was it pointing at him? “The potential. To burn everything down and then dance in the flames. To spend our souls. That’s it. Our soul is like a huge sum of money in the bank which we just cannot spend.”
It was as though, Caliban thought, a whole world of hidden knowledge had been brought by her words into the kitchen – powers and shapes, and a new light, which was shifting on the plates and glasses and in the air.
Now Caliban asked her, “And what does evil mean?”
In the closet in Elvis Presley’s bedroom he found an old guitar, a dinky little one, not unlike the guitar Floyd had played. Caliban held the instrument, touched it. The plink of the string was nothing that had any music in it. He sat on the bed, gazed around at Elvis’s things – the pennants from Humes High, the ball glove smelling of a human hand. There were pictures pinned to the walls, glassy black-and-white photographs – of movie stars, Mrs Presley had said. She’d said the names: Tony Curtis, Marlon Bando, Dean Martin, James Dean. Caliban studied the pictures and wondered, how did they all manage to get their hair to stand up like that?
Whole days spent wondering on such things.
He could smell Elvis Presley everywhere in the house. The smell was so strong – in fact it wasn’t really a smell, it was like a feeling but a feeling made solid – every time he touched something it got itself on him.
